11

Session #2

Land & People:

Connection & Ambivalence

The talkspace: Israel curriculum is a collaboration of Scott Copeland, Clare Goldwater, Seth Goren, Doron Rubin, and Robin Weber and a co-production of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Student Life and the Jewish Agency for Israel‘s Makom Israel Engagement Network. © February, 2008

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Session #2

Land & People: Connection & Ambivalence

Introduction:

Although Zionism is a modern political movement, the Jewish relationship to the Land of Israel is as old as the Jewish People itself. From the beginning, Jewish texts have dealt extensively, and Jewish life has been involved intimately, with the complex relationship between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel. In fact, the word 'Israel' itself is used in the Bible to relate to both the human community and the geographic territory of the family of Jacob/Israel.

Like many intimate relationships, the relation between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel has contained elements of yearning and desire, as well as themes of ambivalence, hesitancy, and emotional complexity. In this session, participants will encounter a diverse selection of Jewish references to the Land of Israel. Hopefully, the accompanying texts will help enrich our discussion about our own relationships with Israel by bringing in voices from a variety of Jewish times, places, and positions.

Session Outline:

Segment Suggested Time Description

Israel Update 5 minutes Designated student reports on Israeli current events

Opening Discussion 15 minutes

Reflect on Assaf Inbari‘s article viewing the connection between the Land of Israel and the People of Israel through the lens of a romantic relationship

Use Inbari‘s framework as an introduction to a conversation about the nature of Jews‘ communal relationship with Israel, and about participants‘ own relationships with Israel

Text Exploration 45 minutes

Introduce participants to the tradition of text study as a mode for exploring ideas

Choose one of 3 methodological options for exploring additional texts about the relationship between Jews and the land of Israel

Wrap Up 10 minutes

Reflect on the session to help participants process and find perspective on the ideas discussed

Encourage participants to apply the ideas they encountered in thinking about their own relationships with Israel

Looking Ahead 5 minutes

Prime participants for next session with brief reflection on the way people conceive of and represent their own identities

Distribute questions for participants to think about before the next session

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Success Checklist

At the end of the session, affirmative answers to these questions will help you know you‘ve been successful:

Did the conversation reflect multiple approaches to thinking about the relationships between the land of Israel, individual Jews, and the Jewish people as a whole?

Did participants reflect on the label of Jews as the ―People of Israel‖? Did the discussion explore the uniqueness of the relationship between a people and a land that share the same name even as the majority of the people live outside of the land?

Did participants start to get comfortable engaging texts as a way of exploring and experimenting with ideas? Did their engagement with the texts enrich the group‘s discussion?

Did participants think critically about their own personal relationship with Israel?

Pre-Session Assignment:

Before this session, participants should read the section from Assaf Inbari's "Forever Engaged, Never Married to the Land of Israel" on Handout 2.1.

Facilitator’s Note: This section from Inbari's essay contends with the unique nature of the Jewish people’s relationship to the Land of Israel. According to Inbari, the Biblical conception of the link between the land of Israel and the people of Israel is shaped by a covenant that makes the Jews fiancés of a land owned by God. The Zionist movement brought another kind of conception—one that emphasized the Jewish connection to the land of Israel through historical memory, residence, Hebrew culture, and sovereignty. In other words, the Zionist movement sought to make the Jews, according to Inbari, ―spouses‖ rather than ―fiancés‖ (also, "owners" rather than "renters" or ―caretakers‖). The tensions among these competing metaphors set the scene for this session’s discussion.

Preparation:

Facilitation Read over this facilitation guide and make sure you are comfortable with all of the material, including the Assaf Inbari (ah-sahf in-bar-ee) article and each text for the text study portion of the session. See the Appendix for suggestions on orienting your group to text study.

If you want to know more about the themes of this session, check out the suggestions for further reading listed at the end of the facilitation guide for this session.

Materials

Before the session, write the following terms on a poster board, flip chart, chalkboard, or similar, big enough to be seen by your whole group:

o Infatuation o Dating o Falling in Love o Being in Love o Engagement o Marriage

Copy Handouts 2.2 & 2.3 for the text exploration activities.

If following Option #1 for the text study (making Talmud pages), have on hand at least 4 pairs of scissors; glue sticks or tape; flip chart paper, 11 x 17-inch paper, or posterboards; and markers.

Copy Handout 3.1 to distribute for students to prepare for Session 3.

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Session Implementation/Description:

Israel Update – 5 minutes Before launching into the talkspace: Israel content for the session, make time for the participant(s) signed up for the week to present an update on Israeli current events. Including this segment in each session will help talkspace: Israel participants connect the content of the program to the facts of Israel‘s present-day existence.

Opening Discussion – 15 minutes As an introduction to your discussion of today‘s topic and the article everyone should have read, present your group with the list of relationship-related words you have written to display before the session. Possible questions to ask your group:

What do each of these terms mean to you? What are the differences between the terms? You may want to write (or ask a volunteer to write) some of the participants‘ responses next to the phrases for the group to see.

Key Points: Each term denotes a different period in a relationship, a different level of commitment, and maybe even a different degree of passion.

What do you think it would look like for Jews to have relationships with Israel of each of the types on our list (infatuation, dating, marriage, etc.)?

In the article you read for today, Assaf Inbari talked about the Jewish people‘s relationship with Israel in terms of engagement and marriage. What does Inbari say about the essence of the intimate and complex relationship between the Jews and Israel? In what ways do you agree with his assessment? In what ways do you disagree?

In applying these terms, is there a difference between individuals‘ relationships with Israel and the relationship between Israel and the entire Jewish People as a whole?

What term best describes your own current relationship to Israel? Can you describe your relationship with Israel using the distinctions among the relationship terms on our list? Are there dimensions of your relationship with Israel that this list does not reflect?

End this opening discussion by suggesting that Inbari offered an interesting — and perhaps useful — scheme for describing the relationship between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel, but Inbari is just one man. A multitude of other philosophers, politicians, historians, theologians, writers, and texts shed light on this relationship from a dramatic range of viewpoints. We will now turn to some of these other perspectives as we delve deeper into our exploration of the relationship at hand.

Text Exploration – 45 minutes This portion of the session further unpacks the nature of the unique relationship between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel by exploring short texts that describe a wide variety of views about relationships to Israel. There are many texts, and there is no need to plow through all of them. The texts are arranged in two separate collections (pre-modern and modern) in Handouts 2.2 & 2.3. They are not presented as authoritative statements on the validity or legitimacy of any particular position. See these texts as partners in your conversation, giving voice to other Jewish points of view from other times and places.

Text study will rear its head as an educational mode throughout the talkspace: Israel curriculum. This session may be the first time that some of your participants have engaged texts in this way. In thinking about how to frame the activity for your group and help participants get comfortable in this kind of discussion, refer to the appendix titled ―Leading Successful Text Study.‖

In this session, we can think of ourselves having a back-and-forth discussion with the texts at hand. Here are three different ways to spark that conversation with your participants:

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Option # 1 (requires scissors and glue/tape): Talmud Pages

Use the texts in the collection to create Talmud-style pages of written dialogue. (You may want to show participants a real page of Talmud to demonstrate what it looks like.) Break the participants into groups and give each group a different one of the texts written as a central point of reference in the middle of a piece of 11x17 or flip chart paper. Ask the group to create a commentary on that central text by cutting and pasting additional texts from Handouts 2.2 and 2.3 and by writing their own comments.

Then distribute markers to all participants and continue these conversations-on-paper by spreading the groups‘ creations around the room and inviting participants to peruse the commentaries, adding their own personal reflections, reactions, questions and ideas.

Finally, bring the group back together to reflect on the process. Ask some of these questions:

How hard was it to find other texts in the collection that shed light on your central text?

When you looked at the whole collection of pages together, did you see new connections?

What was it like to add your own voice to the dialogue among the printed sources we looked at?

Option # 2: Text Mix’N’Match

Divide students into pairs and assign each pair one text from the pre-modern text collection (Handout 2.2) and one from the modern sources (Handout 2.3). Ask them to read and discuss the texts, thinking about the relationship between the texts, the differences between them and what they have in common. How do the traditional and modern approaches differ? Does either text present a challenge that is answered by the other? After giving pairs time to grapple with their texts, come back together as a large group. Ask each pair to briefly—in 1-2 minutes—present their texts and reflections. As groups share, highlight themes and connections that emerge among the various pairs. Ask questions that challenge the group to think more deeply about the meanings of and connections among the texts.

Option #3: Guided Text Study

Choose one of the following study strands and accompanying sets of discussion questions. Ask students to read and discuss the texts in pairs; then come back together as a big group for a larger conversation about participants‘ reactions. (You may want to create a handout with the questions for the Path you select to guide participants in their small groups.) As pairs share their responses to questions, continue to challenge them to examine their responses more deeply through the questions you ask to guide discussion (Hopefully participants will return to the attached texts after this session to converse with those pieces that did not enter their discussion during this session—you can encourage them to do so!)

Path A: Texts 1,7 &13: Genesis 17, Rabbi Nahman, & Ozick

All three texts are about the tension among the places where we live, the places that are our destinations/destiny, and the places that we call home.

How does each of the three texts play differently with the tension between where we are and where we want to be?

How is home both a place of being and a place of becoming? How would you define ―home‖ with regard to each of these texts?

What is the role of the Land of Israel - in a physical and/or metaphorical sense – in each of these texts? In what ways are these takes on Israel similar, and in what ways different?

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Path B: Texts 2,5 &11: Leviticus 25, Additional Amidah Service, & Buber

The assumption of most peoples is that their lives in their given territories are matters of nature; their residence is a fact like the kinds of trees found in a particular province or the path of a specific river. The three texts here offer a different take on the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel—a connection rooted in a moral covenant.

Based on these texts, how would you describe this moral covenant? In this covenant, who is responsible to whom? Do all three texts seem to understand this covenant in the same way?

According to these texts, does the image of "owners," "tenants," or "caretakers" best describe the relationship between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel?

What are the similarities and differences in the roles granted to the divine and to the Jewish people in each of the three texts vis-à-vis their respective responsibilities towards fulfilling the moral covenant?

Path C: Texts 9,10 & 3: Israel's Scroll of Independence, Leibowitz, & Ketubot 111

The richness of a given culture, like the beauty of a fine tapestry, is in the existence of contrasting and complementary threads. Culturally, the Jewish story(ies) is made up of a wide variety of overlapping threads; each one may tell a different story about who we are and who we want to be. Each of these texts tells a story about the meaning of ―home‖ for Jews.

What story does each of these texts tell?

In Ketubot 111, how is the Jew to determine where his/her home is?

In the modern texts, the question is not about the individual Jew, but about notions of homeland as the place of the community's origin. How do the Scroll of Independence and Leibowitz understand the determination of homeland differently?

Is it important to define ―homeland‖ in considering the meaning(s) of Jewish peoplehood and the connection with Israel? Why or why not?

Path D: Texts 6, 12 &14: Lekhah Dodi, Keinan, & London

These three texts invoke a broad array of metaphors and vocabulary, reflecting the varied lenses through which the authors and their subjects view Israel.

What are different ways that the texts relate to Israel? As dream? As reality? As theology? As history and memory? As a home like any other? What else?

What relationships emerge in these texts between the real and the ideal? Does the ideal set a standard toward which the reality is shaped? Is the ideal an escape from the real? Is the real—with all its difficulties—sustainable without the hope given by an ideal? Is one more important than the other?

What different metaphors do you identify? How might these reflect some of the different ways that you think about and experience your own connections to Israel?

Wrap Up – 10 minutes

Lead participants in reflecting on the text study and bringing closure to the session. Questions to propel this reflection include:

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What was this text study like for you? How did it feel to examine the pieces so closely? Were you comfortable with the process? Why or why not?

How did the ideas you encountered in these texts fit with Inbari‘s description of Jews‘ relationship with Israel? Did any of these texts remind you of Inbari‘s article? Clash with his article?

What were some of the most resonant themes that you noticed throughout the texts?

Did any of the texts particularly speak to you? Why?

After exploring the various texts‘ perspectives on our relationship with the land of Israel, what do you think it means to call Jews the People of Israel?

Has your personal sense of your relationship with Israel evolved at all since the beginning of this session?

Go around and ask each person to share one new realization or lingering question after today‘s conversations. (This could be a nice ritual for the end of each session.)

Looking Ahead – 5 minutes Share the following ideas with participants:

In today‘s session we talked about different ways of thinking about the relationship between the Land of Israel and the People of Israel. This conversation will continue next week as we explore the meaning of Jewish identity, and the ways in which that meaning impacts, or is impacted by, Israel.

Our identities are inextricably linked to the physical spaces that are important to us. Alain de Botton writes that one strong element of the human experience is an ―…impulse to acknowledge the extent to which our identities are indelibly connected to… locations.‖

1

This argument suggests that our conceptions of the land of Israel are indelibly tied to our conceptions of who we are as Jewish individuals and as a Jewish people. If this is the case, we won‘t be able to dig deeper into our relationships with Israel until we dig deeper into our understanding of what it means to be Jewish.

To that end, in the next session, we will focus on this matter of self-imagination as we ask, Who are the Jews? How have we understood ourselves over time? How did the public intellectuals and activists of the Zionist movement understand the notions of nationality and religion, and their place in Jewish identity? How do contemporary Israelis attempt to make sense of these same questions? And does Jewishness mean different things inside and outside of Israel?

Before the next session, ask all participants to think about the following questions and note their answers. (See Handout 3.1.) It could even be interesting for participants to get together with someone else in the group to discuss the questions over coffee.

What does it mean to be Jewish?

How do you, personally, know that you‘re Jewish? What are the daily reminders that you‘re Jewish?

How do you express your Jewishness?

When do you feel the most Jewish? When do you feel the least Jewish?

Have you ever been around other Jews expressing their Jewishness in ways that were completely unfamiliar to you? How did you feel in those moments?

How related is Jewishness to religion?

1 De Botton, Alain. The Architecture of Happiness. http://www.alaindebotton.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=56

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If participants have been to Israel, also ask them to think back to their Israel experience and note their answers to the following additional questions.

When did you feel the most Jewish in Israel?

Which expressions of Jewishness in Israel were most familiar to you?

Which expressions of Jewishness in Israel were most foreign to you?

What did you most like about expressions of Jewishness in Israel?

What most bothered you about expressions of Jewishness in Israel?

On a scale of 1-10, how Jewish was Israel in your eyes?

What does it mean to be Jewish in Israel? To what extent is religion a part of Jewishness there?

Suggest to participants that thinking about these questions will get the juices flowing for the next session.

Reading Suggestions

On the Web: The Meaning of the Land of Israel for a Jew. Barbara Spectre (Paedia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Europe, & the Swedish Theological Institute: 2001). http://www.paideia-eu.org/images/docs/1147076174_Spectre2001TheMeaningOfTheLandOfIsrael.pdf

The Religious Significance of Israel. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. (Office of the Chief Rabbi, 22 July 2006). http://www.chiefrabbi.org/thoughts/mattot5766.pdf

Zionism and the Myth of Motherland. Assaf Sagiv (Azure, Autumn 5759/1998, No. 5). http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=203

On the Shelf: The Biography of Ancient Israel. Ilana Pardes (University of California Press, 2000).

A History of Israel and the Holy Land. Michael Avi-Yonah, Ed. (New York, 2003).

The Land Of Israel : Jewish Perspectives. Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ed. (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.)

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Session #2

Land & People: Connection & Ambivalence

Handout 2.1

Forever Engaged, Never Married, to the Land of Israel

Assaf Inbari

Excerpt from Azure (Summer 5767 / 2007, No. 29)

The editors of Azure provide the following summary of the Inbari article on their website: (http://www.shalem.org.il/publications/?did=23)

Assaf Inbari’s "Forever Engaged, Never Married, to the Land of Israel" likens Diaspora Jewry to the unrequited lover yearning for the Land of Israel, here idealized as the undemanding, boundless object of his affection. It is precisely this yearning, writes Inbari that fueled the success of the Zionist dream. He wonders aloud if the return of the Jewish people to Israel shatters this dynamic – as, he claims, the breaking of the glass under the chuppah (or wedding canopy) marks a shattering of sorts.

An acclaimed essayist and literary critic, Inbari explores the complex relationship of the Jews and their homeland—a relationship defined by a tension between yearning and fulfillment. Published extensively in Israeli journals and newspapers and well-known and respected among the Hebrew-speaking public, Inbari, one of Shalem's first three fellows, is just now being introduced to English audiences as well.

Find the complete article at: http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=390

The Zionist choice was neither Rachel nor Leah, neither bachelorhood nor marriage, but something in between. It was a relationship defined by the tension between yearning and its fulfillment in matrimony. It was an eternal engagement to the land of Israel, with no wedding date in sight.

No other nation has chosen this kind of relationship to its homeland, or to experience its country in this manner. This is the secret of the Zionist enterprise: A status vis-à-vis the land that speaks to one‘s level of commitment and responsibility, while at the same time allows—even insists upon—intense desire. Notably, while this relationship may not have been formulated consciously, and was in all likelihood more the result of hardship and fear than ideological clarity, it was nonetheless one that reflected the biblical approach to the land of Israel.

And what was that approach? The land of Israel, as established in the Bible (and contrary to Ben-Gurion‘s pronouncements), is not the birthplace of the Jewish people. If anything, that distinction goes to Ur of the Chaldeans, where the Jewish patriarch Abraham was born. Nor is the land of Israel ever described in the Bible as the ―mother‖ or ―father‖ of the Jewish people, or as its wife (it is not for the Jewish, or any other, people to ―possess‖ the land of Israel—that honor goes to the Master of the Universe alone). Rather, the Jewish people‘s relationship to the land is formulated in the Bible as a covenant, and not as an automatic, organic kind of belonging.

This covenant may best be understood as a type of rental agreement, with the requisite stipulations determined by every landlord in order to protect his property. ―If you heed my laws and my commandments and practice no abominations,‖ says subsection ‗c,‘ ―the land will not eject you as it did the nation which came before you.‖ The nation of Israel was clearly not of the land‘s flesh and blood, like the seven nations who were its true natives. Nor did the land of Israel and the nation of Israel belong to one another in some fatalistic fashion. The nation was to live there, always mindful of its status as renter…

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In initiating an eternal engagement, the biblical covenant required a sense of commitment on the part of the Jewish people akin to that felt by a fiancé toward his lover. Thus it is not coincidental that this pledge of loyalty on the part of the Jews was exacted in the no man‘s land between the exile and the land of Israel: the desert. For the desert is not a place in itself, but rather a corridor from one place to another. In this, the desert is the very embodiment of an engagement, with the Tabernacle serving as a type of portable wedding canopy. ..

This engagement was never intended to end in a marriage, but instead to remain an engagement for all eternity. For the engagement, and not the wedding—the commitment without ownership, the desire without its fulfillment—is the pact that prevents stagnation. A husband‘s lot is the routine of possession; that of the fiancé, of Eros.

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Session #2

Land & People: Connection & Ambivalence

Handout 2.2 – Pre-modern Jewish Texts

Text #1:

Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, "As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you will be the father of a multitude of nations. ―No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. ―I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. "I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. ―I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." God said further to Abraham, "Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.

Genesis 17, 3-9

ים; פניו-על, ויפל אברם ך , אני ד .לאמר, וידבר אתו אלה י את מה ברית יית ; ה לאב , והמך -יקרא עוד את-ולא ה .המון גוים מך אברהם; אברם, ש יה ש המון גוים -כי אב, וה

יך ת פרת ו .נת יך לגוים, י אתך במאד מאדוה ת םך יצאו, ומלכים; ונת י את ז .מ -והקמתינך יני וב י ב ם, ברית ין זרעך אחריך לדרת ים :לברית עולם--וב ולזרעך , להיות לך לאלה

י לך ולזר ח .אחריך ת זת, ארץ כנען-את כל, עך אחריך את ארץ מגריך ונת ; עולם, לאחי להם יית ים, וה ים אל ט .לאלה ר אלה ם-ויאמ ה את, אברה שמר-ואת י ת ה --ברית את

ם, וזרעך אחריך .לדרת

ט-ג, בראשית פרק יז

Text #2:

―…so you shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. You shall thus observe My statutes and keep My judgments, so as to carry them out, that you may live securely on the land. Then the land will yield its produce, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it. But if you say, ‗What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our crops?‘ then I will so order My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years. When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in. The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. Thus for every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land.‖

Leviticus 25, 17-24.

יש את יתו-ולא תונו א יך , עמ אלה יכם, כי אני יהוה :ויראת מ ם יח .אלה ית -את, ועשי קת שמרו-ואת, ח י ת שפט ם, מ ם את ית ם על--ועש בת ארץ-ויש ח, ה ונתנה הארץ יט .לבט

ריה ם לשב , פ ח; עואכלת ם לבט בת ה, וכי תאמרו כ .עליה , ויש יע -מ שב נה ה :תמאכל בש

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ן לא נזרע נו-ולא נאסף את, ה י את כא .תבואת י לכם-וצוית רכת ית, ב ש נה הש ; בשת תבואה-את, ועש נים, לשלש, ה ם כב .הש ינת, וזרעת שמ נה ה ם, את הש ן, ואכלת -מ

ן תבואה יש יעת; ה תש נה ה ה-עד, עד הש ן, תאכלו--בוא תבואת ארץ כג .יש כר , וה ם לא תת ם-כי :הארץ, לי-כי--לצמת בים את די, גרים ותוש זתכם, ובכל כד .עם , גאלה, ארץ אח

תנו לארץ {ס} .ת

כד-יז, ויקרא פרק כה

Text #3:

Rab Judah stated in the name of Samuel: As it is forbidden to leave the Land of Israel for Babylon, so it is forbidden to leave Babylon for other countries…. Rab Judah said: Whoever lives in Babylon is counted as though he lived in the Land of Israel; for it is said in Scripture, "Ho, Zion, escape, thou that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon."

Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 111, Page A, Section 13

דה אמר שמואל כשם שאסור לצאת מארץ ישראל לבבל כך אסור לצאת מבבל אמר רב יהואמר רב יהודה כל הדר בבבל כאילו דר בארץ ישראל שנאמר . . . לשאר ארצות רבה

)זכריה ב( הוי ציון המלטי יושבת בת בבל

פרק יג, עמוד א, קיאכטובות , תלמוד בבלי

Text #4:

A person should remain in the Land of Israel even if he resides in a city whose majority are idolaters as opposed to a city outside of Israel whose population is totally Jewish. This teaches that residence in the Land of Israel is considered equivalent to all of the other commandments in the Torah.

Tosefta, Avodah Zara 5,2

בעיר שכולה ' ל אפי"ישרה אדם בארץ ישראל אפילו בעיר שרובה עובדי כוכבים ולא בחו

.ישראל מלמד שישיבת ארץ ישראל שקולה כנגד כל מצות שבתורה

ב, עבודה זרה ה, תוספתא

Text #5:

On account of our sins we were exiled from our land and distanced from our native soil, and we are unable to go up and appear and bow down before you, to perform our duties in your chosen sanctuary, in the great and holy Temple that is called by your name, because of the assault against your sanctuary.

May it be your will, O Lord our God and God of our ancestors, merciful sovereign, that you will again show compassion upon us and upon your Temple in your abundant mercy; and that you will rebuild it speedily and increase its glory.

Additional Amidah Service for Festivals

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ארצנו ינו גלינו מ א פני חט נו. ומ ת על אדמ קנו מ ין אנחנו יכולים לעלות ולראות. ונתרח ואחות לפניך שת ינו בב . ולה ך ולעשות חובות ירת מקר . ית בח קדוש ש גדול וה ית ה מך בב א ש

ך . עליו קדש ה במ לח משת יד ש פני ה : מ

לפניך ה י רצון מ ינו' יה י אבות ינו ואלה ן. אלה לך רחמ שוב ותרחם עלינו ועל מ . מ ת קדשך שרביםב יך ה רה ותגדל כבודו. רחמ בנהו מה :ות

מוסף לשלוש רגלים

Text #6:

Royal sanctuary, city of royalty, arise and go out from thy upheaval. For too long have you been sitting in the vale of tears. He will treat you with compassion. Shake yourself off from the dust. My people, arise and don the garments of your glory. Nearby is the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. Let my soul's redemption draw near. Wake, wake! For your light is coming. Rise and shine! Arise and give forth in song. God's splendour is being revealed upon you.

"Lekhah Dodi", Solomon Alkabetz

לך עיר מלוכה קדש מ הפכה. מ תוך ה י מ י צא . קומ בכא מלה. רב לך שבת בעמק ה .והוא יחמול עליך ח

י עפר קומ תנערי מ י. ה ך עם פארת גדי ת . לבשי ב

י לחמ ן ישי בית ה . אלהקרבה אל נפשי ג . על יד ב .

תעוררי תעוררי ה י אורי. ה . כי בא אורך קומ . עליך נגלה' כבוד ה. עורי עורי שיר דברי

שלמה אלקבץ' ר, "לך דודי"

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Session #2

Land & People: Connection & Ambivalence

Handout 2.3 – Modern Jewish Texts

Text #7:

Wherever I go, I am going to the Land of Israel.

Attributed to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav

Text #8:

A person is nothing other than a tiny country. A person is nothing more than the imprint of the scenes of their homeland.

Saul Tchernikovsky

.אדם אינו אלא תבנית נוף מולדתו. ץ קטנהאדם אינו אלא קרקע אר

שאול טשרניחובסקי

Text #9:

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.

Exiled from Eretz Yisrael, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.

Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their ancestors and regain their statehood. In recent decades they returned in their masses. They reclaimed the wilderness, revived their language, built cities and villages, and established a vigorous and ever-growing community, with its own economic and cultural life.

Israel's Scroll of Independence (5-1948)

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/Declaration%20of%20Establishment%20of%20State%20of%20Israel

Text #10:

The Land of Israel is not the cradle of Judaism nor of the Jewish people. From the perspective of Judaism – the Land of Israel is a task placed on the people of Israel throughout the generations. The essence of this mission is not control of the land, but the implementation the Torah in the land. The Scroll of Independence of the State of Israel opens with a deliberate lie – "The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people." The Jewish people was not born in the Land of Israel, but came to the Land of Israel as a consolidated nation. The traditional historical consciousness of Judaism sees the birth of the nation – in a symbolic sense – with Abraham our father, who recognizes the Creator in Iraq. The people of Israel comes to crystallization ("and on this day they became a people.") with the covenant sealed in the desert, in a no-mans land. This teaches us that the Torah is not dependent on the Land of Israel. The Torah was given outside of the land, and the bulk of the people of Israel's existence throughout the generations was

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outside of the land. The greatest spiritual and religious creativity took place in the Exile. Without the task of observance of Torah there is no religious meaning to possessing the land. . .

Yeshayahu Leibowitz. "On the Significance of the Land of Israel for Judaism." In a symposium at Bar Ilan University, 1979.

Text #11:

It seems to me that God does not give any one portion of the earth away, so that the owner may say as God says in the Bible: "For all the earth is mine." The conquered land is, in my opinion, only lent even to the conqueror who has settled on it-and God waits to see what he will make of it.

I am told, however, I should not respect the cultivated soil and despise the desert. I am told, the desert is willing to wait for the work of her children: she no longer recognizes us, burdened with civilization, as her children. The desert inspires me with awe; but I do not believe in her absolute resistance, for I believe in the great marriage between man (adam) and earth (adamah). This land recognizes us, for it is fruitful through us: and precisely because it bears fruit for us, it recognizes us. Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish farmers have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab farmers, to cultivate the land more intensively; we desire to teach them further: together with them we want to cultivate the land — to "serve" it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them: we want to live with them. We do not want to dominate them: we want to serve with them. . . .

Martin Buber in an open letter to Mahatma Gandhi (2-19

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/buber1.html

Text #12:

Yigal Yadin, the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces at the end of the War of Independence is the same Yadin who excavated the past and raised it in our consciousness.

Moshe Dayan, also Chief of Staff, a politician, was not an archaeologist in the pure academic sense of the word. However through the passion that he exhibited for deepening, for enriching our roots, he was definitely an archaeologist. He want neither a linguist nor a Bible scholar, but his "Living with the Bible," was his attempt to connect with the ancient roots and from them flower.

Along with the archaeologists in the search for roots should be added the zoologists and the botanists - the first Hebrew zoologist, Yisrael Aharoni, who went in search of the Biblical Oryx; Yehuda Felix, who studied Biblical flora, who sought, but did not find the Afarsimon; and Uriah Feldman, who investigated the flora of the Mishnah; and Aaron Aharonson who discovered 'the mother of wheat". . . .

The passion to know and understand the source of identity is a kind of longing for a lost Atlantis that was the source for every renaissance in the history of peoples. What drove this passion other than a quest to find a point of contact to tradition? Like at the finale of a play by Chekhov, the farmer's plow, the archaeologists pick, the ornithologists binoculars, and the botanists microscope all lead to the inevitable gunshot. This is how the State of Israel was born.

Amos Keinan. "Shoshanat Yericho: EretzYisrael, Environment, Identity, and Culture." (Zemora Botan, 1998) 193

Text #13:

Jerusalem is not simply another foreign city. On what ground can I assert this? To explain, I must take you to Pelham Bay, a neighborhood in the northeast Bronx, in the summer of 1936. A group of little girls, all about eight years old, are playing a street game. Almost all of them are the children or grandchildren of

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immigrants. The game is played like this: you draw a circle with white chalk and divide the circle into equal segments or pie-slices. Each player is assigned a pie-- slice as her designated territory and writes in it the name of the city she knows to be her own, the city she has "come from." So here is Peggy O'Brien, choosing Dublin; and Dorothy Wilson, choosing Glasgow; and Carolyn Johnson, Stockholm; and Maria Viggiano, Naples. But Allegra Sadacca-whose family is recently from Turkey, a remnant of the Spanish Jews expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492-Allegra Sadacca picks Toledo. And I, whose forebears had endured the despots of Russia for a thousand years, I, eight years old, in the borough of the Bronx in New York City, claim Jerusalem. I do this with no sense of symbolism or mysticism. I do it unencumbered by history or metaphysics. I do it because I am a Jewish child, and understand that Jerusalem is my inheritance.

Cynthia Ozick. "Melville's Skull and the Idea of Jerusalem." Partisan Review (Boston, Winter 2002, Vol. 69, Issue 1) 36-37.

Text #14:

Yesterday I asked my 20-year-old daughter what picture comes to mind when she pronounces the word "homeland." Because my daughter served in a front line unit, wandering with it throughout the country from Yeruham to Shechem, I assumed that the borders of her homeland are identical with the borders of our military holdings. But that is not what I heard from her. "No particular geographic picture comes to mind," she said. "Homeland for me is about Memorial Day, about sirens, Arik Einstein, the Gashashim [HaGashash HaHiver – an iconic Israeli comedy trio], my Golani company, my best friends."

And what about the seaside dunes sinking under bare feet, the mountains of Samaria on a foggy morning, a trunk of an olive tree in a Galilee grove, the stupefying heat of summer in the Jordan River Valley, the Golan cliffs? No, the word "homeland" did not fill her with these pictures. The vistas of her homeland are Israeli society and not the geography and climate of the Land of Israel.

Yaron London. "A Person is not the Imprint of their Homeland – Just the Opposite."